June 30, 2009

Questions for Latayne Scott

Please leave your questions for Latayne Scott as comments to this post and she will answer them as she makes her way around on her blog tour. I have a few questions that have arisen over the last month as I have talked with people and have been reading this book.

Arnold – Are there any resources for a non-Christian whose daughter has become a Mormon?

Marianne – Why have Mormons begun to emphasise that they are just another type of Christian like Pentecostals or Roman Catholics? Will this trend continue and is there hope that the LDS will return to orthodoxy?

Me – Where can people download the electronic copy of this book with the extra 150 pages? I cannot find any links on Zondervan’s website and although they list a number of retailers that sell e-books none of them seem to have The Mormon Mirage.

Me – Have there been any academic studies done on the similarities between Joseph Smith and Mohammad? There seem to be a lot of parallels between the two men. Both claimed to be prophets. Both received divine revelation and published new scripture. Both claimed that the Bible as originally given was the word of God but that their later revelation was superior. Both redefined who Jesus Christ is. Both claimed that Jews and Christians edited the Bible to remove mention of their coming as later prophets. Both practiced polygyny and promoted it among their followers. Both claim that in heaven people will be ‘married’ and have multiple wives. Interestingly, after the deaths of the two men their religions split based on whether leadership should be passed on to their descendants or elected.

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A friend of mind approached me with the same question. Her daughter became involved with a Mormon young man and has practically cut her grieving family out of her life. My friend has really appreciated a Yahoo Group called MormonsHMC. You can email them at MormonsHMC@yahoogroups.com.

Marianne, when I was still a student at BYU and a reporter for a campus magazine, I sat in a meeting where LDS church leaders talked of plans to “soften up” (my words, not theirs) communities with billboards, ads in Reader’s Digest, and other popular media to try to position the LDS Church as more mainstream. Later they began to emphasize the name of Jesus Christ in their official logos. About that time they began to change their secret temple ceremonies to make them less caustic toward Christian ministers (once potrayed in LDS as “hirelings of Satan” –their words) and make the oaths in the temple less violent.

I would guess that a lot of this has to do with the LDS church members’ growing discomfort with the peculiarities of their religion, but also with making Mormonism acceptable to the American public. Many Mormons believe a prophecy of Brigham Young that Mormon elders would save the US Constitution at some future date, and many LDS lawyers and politicians see that as an ultimate goal.

I personally do not think that the LDS church can become orthodox without abandoning their claims of a complete apostasy of the Christian church after AD 100, and their teachings that God the Father was once a man, and that LDS people will become gods after their deaths.

Arnold, a friend of mine has a daughter who has cut off her grieving family after joining the LDS church. My friend has found great help in a Yahoo discussion group called MormonsHMC. You can contact them via MormonsHMC@yahoogroups.com.